The Memorial Library/ the Olga Lengyel Institute
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THE MEMORIAL LIBRARY/ THE OLGA LENGYEL INSTITUTE PARTICIPANTS AND FACULTY AT THE 2015 MEMORIAL LIBRARY SUMMER SEMINAR IN NEW YORK CITY. 2015 Dr. Sondra Perl Director, The Holocaust Educators Network Dr. Jennifer Lemberg Associate Director, The Holocaust Educators Network The Memorial Library/ The Olga Lengyel Institute Contents Overview I. Introduction II. 2015 Memorial Library Summer Seminar on Holocaust Education III. Satellite Seminars IV. Mini-Grant Program V. Professional Development/Conferences VI. Assessment Survey VII. International Programs VIII. Words of Appreciation IX. Appendices: 2015 Seminars Agendas and Participants Page 1 Final Report 2015 I. Introduction The Memorial Library and the Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust and Human Rights provide professional development opportunities for educators across the United States and Europe. Our focus is on using the lessons of the Holocaust to shed light on current issues of social injustice. Our long-term goal is to work with teachers across the globe so that they can advance a classroom agenda that teaches students about the Holocaust while also empowering them to step up and speak out on behalf of human rights. In this report, we begin with our flagship program, the Memorial Library Summer Seminar in New York City, and then report on our outreach programs in the United States which include our satellite seminars, mini-grant project, and workshops at professional conferences. Following our programs is an overview of a large-scale assessment study conducted by an independent research firm to evaluate the effectiveness of our work in the United States. The assessment survey was distributed to all teachers who attended our programs since their inception in 2006 and have become members of our professional development community, the Holocaust Educators Network. We conclude with a description of our support for and development of outreach efforts in Europe, notably in Romania and Bulgaria, where we have begun to work intensively with teachers and administrators in both countries. II. 2015 Memorial Library Summer Seminar on Holocaust Education The Holocaust Educators Network (HEN), a division of the Memorial Library, has its start each summer at the Memorial Library Summer Seminar. It is here, at the offices of the Memorial Library at 58 E. 79th Street in Manhattan, that we hold a 12-day seminar for twenty-five middle school, high school, and college teachers from across the United States. In the seminar we use writing and dialogue to reflect on the challenges of teaching the Holocaust and other genocides, and to create plans for bringing what the participants have learned back to their schools and communities. The group of teachers we convened in the summer of 2015 represented a wide variety of schools and backgrounds—some were teacher- consultants from the National Writing Project, others were teacher-leaders from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, additional participants came to us via the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers Program, the ADL Bearing Witness Program, and the Shoah Foundation Visual History Project. Two educators from Hungary also joined us as part of a US State Department program. To prepare, participants were asked to join the Memorial Library’s website, where they engaged in online conversations beginning approximately six weeks before the seminar. Online forums included a space for participants to introduce themselves to build community in advance of their meeting in person, and others where they could discuss Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys and HEN Director Dr. Sondra Perl’s On Austrian Soil and begin the shared process of dialogue and learning. Dr. Perl opened the seminar with an overview of the themes that would guide our shared inquiry, focusing on identity, Holocaust history and testimony, approaches to designing curricula, inquiry methods, and professional stance, including the following: Examining Identity Who are we? How are our identities formed? What texts, images and artifacts do we choose to represent ourselves? What is the relationship between our personal and professional identities? Page 2 The Memorial Library/ The Olga Lengyel Institute Studying the Holocaust Listening to Survivor Testimony Gaining Perspectives on Judaism: History, Culture, Rituals & Practices Accessing History through Conversations with Scholars and Artifacts Working on Curriculum Responding critically and generously to classroom approaches Considering the relationship of Holocaust education to social justice in the world today Creating and taking next steps: Networking among ourselves, working with our students, and bringing this work to our communities Effecting change: Memorial Library mini-grants & ongoing collaboration with HEN and other partner organizations. Understanding Pedagogy We start with ourselves and then move into the world based on the premise that teaching and learning are both personal and social engagements. We write -- composing stories, poems and personal reflections — exploring the way writing anchors us in a shaky world and gives voice to what often remains inchoate or unsaid. Ultimately, the seminar is an inquiry that will grow from our shared reading, writing, responding, and reflecting. In teaching the seminar, Perl was joined by HEN’s Associate Director, Dr. Jennifer Lemberg. Alice Braziller, Micha Franke and Oana Popescu Sandu served as important members of our teaching team. Ildiko Kope provided essential back-up and office support and Doua Abulafia was our summer intern. The program included: Holocaust survivor testimony by Irving Roth; a lecture entitled “How Was It Possible?” by noted historian Peter Hayes at the Museum of Jewish Heritage; a lecture on the concentration camp system by Dachau educator Micha Franke; a workshop on culturally sensitive pedagogy by Professor Miriam Ezzani; workshops by three former Memorial Library participants, Michelle Clark, Corey Harbaugh, and Diane Williams focusing on Holocaust education across the US and action projects for the classroom focusing on social justice; a premier of a new documentary, The Sharps’ War, about two Americans who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, introduced by the filmmaker (their grandson), Artemis Joukowsky; a workshop on responding to the film by Facing History and Ourselves NYC leader, Kevin Feinberg; Page 3 Final Report 2015 a discussion about the history of Judaism with Rabbi Deborah Hirsch followed by a Shabbat service at Temple Shaaray Tefila and then a Shabbat meal back at the Memorial Library; a klezmer performance, and a ten-year anniversary celebration with invited guests from NYC and California. Throughout twelve days (June 20 to July 1, 2015), the seminar aimed to make connections between the historical legacy of the Holocaust and present-day instances of social injustice. We requested that the teachers send lesson plans in advance so that, as in prior years, their work could be easily distributed and used in the curriculum groups, where teachers demonstrated their best practices for learning about history, processing student responses to atrocity, and building connections to current issues in creative and innovative ways. This year we also created both print curriculum booklets and flash drives filled with all the materials distributed and referred to in the seminar in order to make disseminating the materials to participants’ home institutions easier. In its tenth year, the goals of the seminar built upon its original purpose while also seeking to improve upon the previous summer. Our aims were as follows: . To teach teachers about the Holocaust, focusing on history, testimony, and contemporary theoretical concepts; . To help teachers create new methods for engaging students with hard issues by using ‘writing-to- learn’ practices and other interactive teaching strategies; . To introduce teachers to and involve them in the use of new media for studying the Holocaust; . To develop pedagogical techniques for addressing the range of responses that comes into play when teaching the Holocaust, and for directing the energy generated by those responses toward addressing contemporary conflicts; . To build teachers’ cultural knowledge of Judaism in order to enhance their ability to teach about the Holocaust; . To connect our work with the Holocaust and other genocides to issues of social justice today; and . To encourage and support teachers in the creation of action projects in their schools and communities. Participants came from schools in fifteen different states and two from abroad: Alabama, Arizona, California, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin and Hungary. A list of participants’ names and schools are attached. Please see Appendix A. All were awarded $350 and a certificate marking 75 hours of completed professional development for their participation in the seminar. Other Highlights from the Summer Seminar Each day of the seminar began and ended with the opportunity to reflect, in writing or through other shared activities, on issues, questions, and troubling or traumatic content that arose during the course of the seminar. As mentioned above, we listened to testimony from Holocaust survivor Irving Roth who bore witness to his experience of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and also spoke about the importance of Page 4 The Memorial Library/ The Olga Lengyel Institute Holocaust memory and its implications for the future. Additional weekend and evening activities